Archive for the ‘Personal Comments’ Category

Over the past decade there has been, for me, a complete change of perspective, for I have gone from upholding and violently propagating the racialism of National-Socialism – and encouraging the overthrow of the existing status quo through revolutionary insurrection – to the acceptance of empathy and compassion, and to that gentle, quiet, desire to cease to cause suffering, which form the basis for what I have called The Numinous Way, with this Numinous Way being apolitical, undogmatic, and considering both race and “the folk” as unethical abstractions which move us away from empathy and compassion and which thus obscure our true human nature.

Why unethical? Because The Numinous Way uncovers, through empathy, the nexion we, as individuals, are to all life, thus making us aware of how all life – sentient and otherwise – is connected and part of that matrix, that Unity, which is the Cosmos, and it is a knowing and appreciation of this connexion which is lost when we impose abstractions upon life, and especially when we judge other beings by a criteria established by some such abstraction. For this knowing and appreciation of our connexion to other life is the beginning of compassion, and a presencing – a manifestation – of our humanity, of our knowing of ourselves in relation to other life, and the Cosmos itself; and, thus, a placing of us, as individuals, in an ethical, and a Cosmic, perspective.

This change of my perspective – this personal change in me – arose, or derived, from several things: from involvement with and belief in, during the past decade, a certain Way of Life, considered by many to be a religion; from thinking deeply about certain ethical questions whose genesis was reflecting upon my thirty years of violent political activism; and from a variety of personal events and experiences, two of which events involved the loss of loved ones, and one of which loss involved the suicide of my fiancée.

However, this change was a slow, often difficult, process, and there was to be, during this decade, a stubborn refusal, by me, to follow – except for short periods – where this change led me; a stubborn refusal to-be, except for short periods, the person I was shown to be, should-be, by and through this alchemical process of inner change. Thus was there a stubborn clinging to doing what I conceived to be my honourable duty, and it is only in the last month that I have finally and to my own satisfaction resolved, in an ethical way, the dilemma of such a duty, thus ending my association with a particular Way of Life, which Way many consider a religion.

During this decade of inner reflexion, of great outward change – of lifestyle, occupation, belief, place of dwelling – there was a quite slow rediscovery of the individual I had been before my fanatical pursuit of a political cause became the priority of my life: the person behind the various rôles played or assumed, over more than three decades, for the purpose of attaining particular outer goals deriving from some abstraction, some ideal, or some other impersonal thing. That is, I gradually, over the past decade, ceased believing in a certain principle which I had formerly accepted; which principle I had placed before my own personal feelings; which principle I had used, quite deliberately, to change myself; and which principle I had stubbornly adhered to for almost four decades, believing that it was my honourable duty to do so.

This principle was that in order to attain one’s “ideal world”, certain sacrifices had to be made “for the greater good”. In accord with this principle, I considered I had certain duties, and accordingly sacrificed not only my own, personal, happiness, but also that of others, including that of four women who loved me; and it is perhaps fair to conclude that it was this principle which made me seem to others to be, for three decades, a political fanatic, and – for many years after that – a kind of religious zealot. Indeed, it is probably even fairer to conclude that I was indeed such a fanatic and such a zealot, for, in the pursuit of some abstraction, some ideal, some notion of duty, some dogma, I deliberately controlled my own nature, a nature evident – over the decades – in my poetry; in my wanderings as a vagabond; in my initial enthusiasm as a Christian monk; in the tears cried upon hearing some sublime piece of music; in my love of Nature, and of women. That is, there were always times in my life when I reverted back to being the person I felt, I knew, I was; always times when I stopped, for a few months, or a year or maybe longer, interfering in the world; when I ceased to place a perceived duty before myself, and when I thus interacted with others, with the world, only in a direct, personal, empathic way sans some ideal, some dogma.

Now, I have finally come to understand that this principle of idealism, the guiding principle of most of my adult life, is unethical, and therefore fundamentally wrong and inhuman. That is, it is a manufactured abstraction; a great cause of suffering, and that nothing – no idealism, no cause, no ideal, no dogma, no perceived duty – is worth or justifies the suffering of any living-being, sentient or otherwise. That it is empathy, compassion and a personal love which are human, the essence of our humanity: not some abstract notion of duty; not some idealism. That it is the impersonal interference in the affairs of others – based on some cause, some belief, some dogma, some perceived duty, some ideology, some creed, some ideal, some manufactured abstraction – which causes and greatly contributes to suffering, and which moves us far away from empathy and compassion and thus diverts us from our humanity and from changing ourselves, in a quiet way, into a more evolved, a more empathic and more compassionate, human being.

Thus, in many ways, The Numinous Way – as now developed, and as explicated by me in the past month (see Footnote 1 ) – represents my true nature: the hard, difficult, re-discovery of what I had controlled, and lost; and, perhaps more importantly, an evolution of that personal nature as a result of my diverse experiences, my learning from my mistakes, and my empathic awareness of the suffering I have caused to others.

Hence, I have been, for many decades, wrong; misguided. Or, rather, I misguided myself, allowing idealism and a perceived duty to triumph over, to veil, my humanity. My good intentions were no excuse, even though, for nearly four decades, I made them an excuse, as idealists always do. For, during all the decades of my various involvements – of my arrogant interference based on some abstraction – I sincerely believed I was doing what was “right”, or “honourable”, and that such suffering as I caused, or aided, or incited, was “necessary” for some ideal to be born in some “future”.

But now my inescapable reality is that of a personal empathy, a personal compassion, a simple, quiet, letting-be; a knowing that such answers as I have, now, are just my answers, and that I have no duty other than to be human, to gently strive to be a better human being through reforming myself by quietly cultivating empathy and compassion. Of course, I do not expect to be understood, and probably will continue to be judged, by others, according to some, or all, of my former beliefs, involvements.

So I rest – tired, awake, exhausted, from days of work,
Worry, Dreams, and Thought
Resting while the hot Sun flows
And the fastly flowing nebulae of clouds, wind-spaked,
Grow tendrils to shape themselves with faces
Here:
One planet gasping as it gasps
Since the slaying by Homo Hubris never ever seems
To stop.

Too late the empathy to set us flowing
Back to love?
So much promise for so long undesired
I am left sad, warm, sleepy
While the Summer Sun brings peace enough
To sleep-me
As the circling Buzzard
Cries.So There Is Warm Sun

Editorial Note (by Raffy, Nov 16, 08): After considering a polite request to remove the following article, I decided to keep it, pointing out that it is filed in the Categories Disinformation, and Allegations, and that there is already a suitable Disclaimer at the beginning of the article.

This is the latest, updated, version (1.15a, January 120yf) and supersedes all previous versions.

I have pieced this Chronology together from a variety of sources, including some unpublished ones, some Internet items, and some articles published in various printed magazines, newspapers, and books. I have also, on occasion, used information supplied by various contacts of mine who are familiar with the life and works of both David Myatt and Anton Long.

This unofficialChronology is based on the assumption that Anton Long is a pseudonym of David Myatt.

Thus, it is an amalgam of the assumed life of Anton Long – taken from the above mentioned variety of sources – and information about Myatt obtained from a similar variety of sources.

In the interests of fairness, I must point out that Myatt himself still continues, publicly and privately and consistently, to deny being Anton Long, and publicly and privately denies any invovlement with the ONA, and affirms his continuing commitment to Islam.

All errors, mistakes, omissions, and the unintentional reproduction of disinformation, in this Chronology, are entirely my fault.

Version 1.15a
Updated January, 120yf

^^^

Anton Long: A Short Chronology of His Life

Born 1950

1950-c.1967: Africa and Far East

c.1965-66:

^ Begins study of Martial Art, based on Taoism, in Singapore
^ Initiated into pleasures of erotica in Singapore brothel

1967: Arrives in England to complete schooling

Notable events: 1967- 1968

^ Leaves home (his father returns to live and work in Africa) – working during School holidays at a variety of jobs, including fruit picking, a farm, and a local factory. His father gives him a generous monthly allowance
^ Joins small traditional coven in the Fenlands of East Anglia
^ Begins study of National Socialism following reading about Major General Otto Ernst Remer
^ Joins Colin Jordan’s newly formed neo-nazi British Movement
^ Visits London in search of Occult groups and makes contact with small group following G*D* and Crowleyian magick, which he soon rejects as “wishy-washy arty-farty mumbo-jumbo”
^ Regularly attends meetings and rallies and demonstrations by BM, and newly formed NF, and gets involved with many fights
^ Joins small Left Hand Path group in London, and meets lady who runs a well-kept and high-class brothel: Quod duo Concubinatus genera sint, as he was to later, mockingly, write.

All this activity and seeking has a deleterious effect on his school studies, and he seriously considers quitting studying for his “A” levels and moving to live and work in London

1969 – 71

^ Seeking Promethean challenges, he becomes, for around nine months, a cat-burglar, and targets premises in London, expressing delight in the risks and the physical challenges, especially when access is through entries such as upper floor windows and roofs. He tests each “mark” personally – in terms of their individual character – before deciding if their premises, domestic or business (or both, but often just business and commercial premises), merit his attention, and later uses the experience gained to refine the ONA’s guidelines for the testing of opfers.

^ Leaves School to enter University, where he studies Physics

^ 1971: Becomes disenchanted with University, and spends more time traveling around the country attending political meetings, rallies and demonstrations, as well as working with a small Left Hand Path group, based in Yorkshire, called The Temple of the Sun, and visiting and staying with his lady friend, the brothel owner, in London where he occasionally helps out with running the business

On several occasions, he acts as Colin Jordan’s bodyguard at BM meetings and rallies.

He meets, via a contact in a Manchester Left Hand Path group, the Lady Master, of a traditional Sinister group, whose daughter initiates him into their reclusive sinister ways, and he spends many weeks staying with them, studying, and recording, their aural traditions after which his new Lady Master and her daughter emigrate to Australia, leaving him in charge of their very small Left Hand Path group, numbering less than thirteen people, to which group he gives the name Order of Nine Angles. The young lady who initiates him subsequently (and in Australia) gives birth to Myatt’s daughter, whom Myatt only meets decades later. She and her mother have stipulated that Myatt should have no contact with them, nor try to find them, unless they contact him, a stipulation which he, honorably, honors.

1971-1974: Leeds and the NDFM

^ 1971: Finally leaves University after meeting and becoming friends with Eddy Morrison at several neo-nazi rallies and meetings in Leeds, and moves, early in 1972, to live in Leeds, where he is active on behalf of BM and other neo-nazi groups, and where, in the following months – after yet another violent skirmish – he is arrested for his part in a “Paki-bashing” incident involving a gang of skinheads, for which he is subsequently sent to Prison, having been identified as the leader of that gang.
^ 1973: On release from prison he decides to form, with Eddy Morrison, his own neo-nazi group, the NDFM (National Democratic Freedom Movement), with Morrison as leader and himself in charge of propaganda.

Also forms a small criminal gang to “re-distribute some of the wealth stolen by big capitalist firms”, believing that these are “victimless crimes”. He is to be arrested, early in 1974, for his part in these crimes, after an investigation and raids by the Yorkshire Regional Crime Squad (later to become part of the National Crime Squad, which dealt with “serious and organized crime”). Following his arrest, Myatt is charged with several crimes, held on remand in prison, and is subsequently found guilty, and given a suspended Prison sentence.

He is invited to join the underground neo-nazi group Column 88 (a part of NATO’s clandestine Gladio network, with links to MI5 and MI6), which he does, and regularly attends their training sessions, meetings and camps. C88 is led by a former Special Forces Army officer, and its main NATO given task was to conduct sabotage and assassinations in the event of a Soviet invasion.

In early 1974 Myatt gives his first interview to a newspaper journalist, who subsequently reneges on his promise to show Myatt a draft before it is published, and who publishes a sensationalist and untrue story about Myatt and Satanism which appears on the front-page of the local evening newspaper, complete with Myatt’s photograph. The sensationalist claims includes stories of animal sacrifice, and Myatt is interviewed by both the RSPCA, and the Police, about these stories, with both the RSPCA and the Police concluding that they are journalistic invention. The reporter subsequently becomes ill and dies, after a lingering illness, less than a year later. Anton Long was to later write that he never did and never would sacrifice any animals since there was an abundance of human dross suitable as opfers.

Myatt makes several visits to Northern Ireland, traveling on the overnight ferry from Liverpool to Belfast, describing these as “visits of a curious tourist”.

^ 1974: the ultra-violent NDFM year where Myatt regularly speaks at public meetings and rallies, smashes up an anti-Apartheid exhibition (twice), assaults an anti-fascist photographer, and gets arrested at least five times for violent offenses, including wading into a Trades Union march and destroying one of their banners. Speaks at Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, to a crowd of nearly a thousand, and at an outdoor rally on Leeds Town Hall steps, to a crowd of several hundred, which ends in a mass brawl, and with him being arrested again. A few months later he appears in Court, and is sent to Prison, again, for his part in “inciting and leading” the fighting during yet another mass brawl.

1975-1981: ONA Insight Roles

On his release from Prison, he grows a beard, and becomes – for several months – a “Gentleman of the Road” (a drifter or vagabond), then settles down to live alone in a caravan in a field in the Fenlands to begin codifying and extensively developing ONA teachings. He undertakes the physical tasks described in the aural traditions he has inherited, then the grade Ritual of Internal Adept, in the Highlands of Scotland (near Loch Ness), afterwards resuming his regular visits to his lady friend, and her girls, in London, who have moved to new premises.

He decides he must spend many years personally trying out – and the refining, from experience – various ONA techniques, including Insight Roles, and opts to enter the noviciate of a Nazarene monastery where he spends nearly two years, during which he continues his Occult studies.

Not long after he leaves the monastery, he moves to Shropshire, resumes his Occult writings, begins writing about National Socialism, and meets the women whom he marries some months later. He successfully undertakes another Insight Role and completes all the new physical challenges he has developed, for External Adept, and described in Complete Guide To The Seven-Fold Sinister Way – having considered the ones he has inherited, and already undertaken, as “just too easy”.

Begins work as a gardener at a country house in Shropshire, and occasionally travels overseas, while continuing his association with Column 88, attending their clandestine meetings and training sessions.

1982-1988:

Settled, in Shropshire, he begins writing in earnest about National Socialism, and publishes Vindex: The Destiny of The West and other works of his fourteen volume National-Socialist Series. Begins translating Greek literature, and publishes his translations of Sappho and Sophocles. Regularly writes for a variety of NS and nationalist publications (under his own name and using a variety of ‘nyms) including for John Tyndall’s Spearhead magazine. Privately teaches a few individuals Martial Arts, and completes The Deofel Quartet, and his voluminous ONA works, which he begins to distribute via Thormynd Press and other outlets. These ONA works include early editions of Naos, Hostia, and Black Book of Satan, Part 1

In the middle 80’s he is interviewed by the Police about the murder of a local woman (Hilda Murrell) who was an active supporter of nuclear disarmament, and is also interviewed by Jenny Rathbone, of ITV’s World in Action, about the affair (although his comments were never broadcast), suspicions having been raised in some quarters as to whether Myatt was doing some “dirty work” for MI5. Someone – who was also suspected of “dirty tricks” for MI5, knew someone who knew Myatt – committed suicide before he could be questioned about the murder, and the murder was to spawn various “conspiracy theories” although, decades later, the real murderer was found, charged and imprisoned.

A few years after this incident, Myatt divorces his wife (she goes off to live with a younger lady) and he disbands the few, and small, ceremonial ONA groups that exist and which he still leads, having returned to, and further developed, the more traditional way of individual Initiates working alone with perchance some guidance.

With Column 88 disbanded after its existence became public knowledge, he regularly travels the UK to recruit (at neo-nazi and nationalist meetings and events) members for his clandestine neo-nazi group, the Aryan Resistance Movement (later, Aryan Liberation Army) whose candidates he tests by methods deriving from the ONA, but finds only a few suitable individuals.

1989-1993:

Still living in Shropshire, he marries again, and travels many times to Egypt and other parts of Africa (where he again visits his father’s grave which lies somewhere “between the Bangweulu swamp and the Lulua river”). He publishes further NS writings, more ONA material, and a translation of The Agamemnon by Aeschylus, and – following the untimely death of his second wife from cancer – he begins a course in Arabic at a British University only to leave after a short while to cycle through the Sahara Desert (from Cairo to El-Kharga oasis via Farafra), returning to move to live near the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border and work on a farm.

He then becomes involved with Combat 18, a group started not by Myatt himself but by Charlie Sargent, and his brother, Steve.

1994-1999: Combat 18 and The London Nail Bombings

During these years, he returns again to being publicly active on behalf of National Socialism, attending meetings and events organized by C18 and other neo-nazi groups, and again speaking in public. Several articles about him appear in the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight, and in other magazines, and Liberty Bell, in America, publish most of his Thormynd National-Socialist Series of NS essays. A booklet, attributed to Myatt, announcing the formation of a leaderless resistance racist group, “The White Wolves”, is distributed, containing practical advice on making home-made bombs. Myatt issues a bi-monthly NS publication, The National-Socialist, in support of C18. He also marries for the third time, to live (after a honeymoon in The Maldives) in what one Midlands newspaper subsequently reported (complete with photograph) as a “luxury detached four-bedroomed house” in a small village near the town of Malvern.

Not long after settling there, Myatt travels to Australia, having received an unexpected invitation from the lady who initiated him into what was to become the ONA to attend the funeral of her mother, and Myatt there meets his daughter for the first time, who is a married woman with children of her own.

Myatt continues to clandestinely recruit for his covert Aryan Resistance Movement (ARM), his terrorist manual A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution – described as a “detailed step-by-step guide for terrorist insurrection” – is put on the Internet for the first-time by someone in Canada, and there are rumors of Myatt receiving financial support from a former member of Hitler’s Waffen SS.

He makes further visits to Northern Ireland, flying from Manchester Airport to ‘Derry, describing these visits as “coastal and hill walks; enjoying the solitude and scenery.”

During 1997, C18 splits into two factions, the disloyal faction being led by someone called Browning who was accused by Charlie and others of stealing C18 funds, and Charlie Sargent is arrested for the murder of a Browning supporter. Myatt, remaining loyal to Charlie, forms and leads The National-Socialist Movement, after getting Colin Jordan’s permission to use that name, and all the members of C18 loyal to Charlie join this group, which includes several serving soldiers of the British Army. Myatt appears at Charlie’s trial to give him public support and twice publicly challenges Browning to a duel with deadly weapons but Browning fails to accept these challenges to a private duel. A photograph of Myatt with a woman (a C18 member) – outside the Court at Chelmsford – appears in Searchlight together with a description of the continuing feud between the two C18 factions.

Myatt is interviewed at an Inn in Craven Arms, Shropshire, by Nick Lowles of Searchlight, who – fearful of Myatt’s reputation as man of violence who “always carries a weapon” – brings along a “minder” and declines Myatt’s suggestion to meet elsewhere, fearing an ambush. Unknown to Lowles, several supporters of Myatt are already present in the Inn. Lowles tries to get Myatt to admit to being Anton Long, mentioning a PO Box in Hereford which he claims is “proof”, but Myatt politely replies that he was, for a short while only, merely doing a favor for a long-standing friend whose views he did not share. Lowles eventually gets angry – shouting at Myatt: “Why don’t you just admit it!” – but Myatt remains calm and polite and repeats his denial. Myatt was later to write that he had mentioned this friend several times before, including to Professor Jeffrey Kaplan (see footnote #51 of Kaplan’s book Nation and Race). Myatt was to later publicly challenge Lowles to a duel with deadly weapons for spreading lies and making malicious allegations about him, a challenge which Lowles did not accept, leading Myatt to publicly call him “a dishonourable lying coward”.

In the early months of 1998, a squad of detectives from Scotland Yard’s SO12 unit conduct a Dawn raid on Myatt’s home and arrest him. His house is searched by seven Police officers for over seven hours, and computers, literature and other items are seized, while Myatt is taken away for questioning. (Myatt is formally arrested and cautioned by DC Mark Whalley, of S012, Scotland Yard.) Myatt is later released on bail, while the Police continue what is to be a three year long investigation into charges relating to incitement to murder, conspiracy to murder, and incitement to racial hatred, with this investigation involving Interpol, the FBI, MI6, and the Canadian Police. Myatt is again the subject of an article in Searchlight, who post a photograph of him on their front cover, with the heading The Most Evil Nazi in Britain. It later transpires that Nick Lowles and Gerry Gable, of Searchlight, and Michael Whine, of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, are the people responsible for putting pressure on Scotland Yard to arrest Myatt, having made an official complaint against him and his neo-nazi activities.

Some months after Charlie Sargent is sent to prison for murder, Myatt resigns as leader of the NSM, to concentrate on his own Reichsfolk and ARM organizations. Then, quietly, with no announcement either public or private, in September of 1998 Myatt converts to Islam at a Mosque in the Midlands.

In 1999 David Copeland – a member of Myatt’s NSM – begins his campaign to start a racial war by exploding three nail-bombs in various areas of London. Three people are killed, and over a hundred are injured, many seriously. Copeland is arrested soon after the last bomb explodes, and before he could detonate more bombs.

Prior to Copeland’s trial, Myatt is questioned by Police officers from Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorism branch about Copeland, but denies any connection, and he is also confronted by a reporter from the BBC’s Panorama program who asks him the same question.

Following Copeland’s trial and conviction, a year later, the BBC Panorama program about Copeland is broadcast (with Myatt’s voice altered by BBC special effects at the suggestion of Nick Lowles), accusing Myatt of being Copeland’s mentor, and there are subsequently many other Media reports about Myatt and Copeland, with journalists arriving at Myatt’s home and place of work (a farm) in an effort to interview him. Myatt declines to answer any of their questions, and instead issues a public statement in which he stated: “I personally regret nothing. There is nothing to apologize for; nothing to plead or feel guilty about…”

Every six months or so (and until 2001), the Police continue to formally interrogate Myatt (mostly at Charing Cross Police Station, in London, but on one occasion at Oxford Police Station) regarding Copeland, A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, and other matters relating to the charges still pending against him.

2000-2008:

Myatt continues – until the end of 2000 – to issue editions of his The National-Socialist newsletter, as he continues to write about National Socialism, and lead Reichsfolk. At the beginning of 2001, the Police inform Myatt that they have dropped all charges against him, and return his computers and other belongings.

In the Summer of 2000, Myatt, according to one source, travels to Iran, from whence he crosses over to Iraq. He begins to write about Islam and in particular articles about and praising Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. In the Summer of 2001, Myatt leaves his wife, citing “irreconcilable differences” mostly to do with his Islam, sells the house, and goes to briefly stay with CB (and his female partner) on a farm in Shropshire for a few months, before becoming, for some months, a “Gentleman of the Road” in the fells of Cumbria.

He then settles in a town in the north of England, together with a new girlfriend, producing more writings about both Islam and what he calls The Numinous Way. After around six months, he moves again to begin work on a rural farm, visiting Egypt several times, while continuing to produce more polemical Islamist writings and continuing to try and get neo-nazis to cooperate with radical Muslims in order to fight “the tyrannical New World Order, the dishonourable profane Zionist led Crusade alliance…” and, of this cooperation, Professor George Michael was later to write that Myatt has “arguably done more than any other theorist to develop a synthesis of the extreme right and Islam.”

Between 2003 and 2006 Myatt concentrates on writing about, and being involved with, Islam, earning a reputation as a radical Islamist, a supporter of both “suicide attacks”, and of Osama bin Laden. One of his articles justifying suicide attacks is, for several years, on the Izz al-Din al-Qassam (the military wing) section of the Hamas website whose members have killed hundreds of Jews in such attacks. Myatt, in many essays and on Internet forums, in various interviews and discussions, and using his Muslim names including Abdul Aziz, defends both the 9/11 and the London 7/7 attacks.

In 2005, he is mentioned at a NATO conference On Terrorism and Communications, in Slovakia, where it is stated that he has called upon “all enemies of the Zionists to embrace the Jihad, the ‘true martial religion’ which will most effectively fight against the Jews and the Americans.”

In 2006, he takes part in an “on-line” dialog, on a well-known and respected Islamic website, answering questions from Muslims world-wide. He is the subject of a full-page article (complete with color photograph) in The Times, of London, newspaper – under the topic Muslim Extremists in Britain – and is subsequently asked by several other newspapers for interviews, and invited to appear on an Arabic television station to discuss his support for bin Laden, all of which offers he declines.

Also in 2006, Myatt – as Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt – is mentioned at the grandly named NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Hypermedia Seduction for Terrorist Recruiting, held at Eilat, in “Israel”.

Recent Islamist articles of his include essays such as In Reply to Sheikh Salman b. Fahd al-Oadah(where he again defends bin Laden), The Revival of Aql, and The Aims of Al-Qaeda which is translated into many languages, including Italian.

Despite his involvement with Islam, rumors persist concerning Myatt continuing to be involved with the ONA, and continuing to develop his Numinous Way philosophy, and, between 2006 and 2008 dozens of new and revised articles about The Numinous Way are distributed. In early 2009 The Numinous Way Foundation issues a compilation of these revised and new articles. In the late Fall of 2008 – as in some previous years – rumors began circulating that Myatt had abandoned Islam in favor of his The Numinous Way, but Myatt himself denies this, claiming he is still a Muslim, and continues to write and publish Islamist articles, such as The Zionist Attacks on Gaza, dated 8 Muharram 1430 (i.e. January 2009).

Emanations of a Mage (unpublished MS by Anton Long, dated 118 Year of Fayen)

Printed and Published:

Searchlight, issue of Feb 1984

Searchlight, issue of April 1984

Searchlight, issue of January 1991

Searchlight, issue of July 1995

Searchlight, issue of April 1998

Searchlight, issue of July 2000

Jeffrey Kaplan, “Religiosity and the Radical Right: Toward the Creation of a New Ethnic Identity,” in Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjorgo, eds., Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture (Northeastern University Press, 1998)

The following item by me is really just cobbled together from some e-mail correspondence I’ve had with several people, recently, about David Myatt, his poetry, and his Numinous Way, and if, and how, this stuff is related to the ONA and “Anton Long’s” sinister aims. I’ve naturally amended my original e-mail text in places, added some bits, and turned some of the quoted e-mail text, of others, into questions.

In the interests of fairness, I must point out that it is my belief that Anton Long is a pseudonym of Myatt’s. Therefore, I have used this belief of mine – this assumption – in order to arrive at certain conclusions regarding Myatt’s life and works.

For his part, Myatt publicly affirms his continuing commitment to Islam; still continues, publicly and privately and consistently, to deny being Anton Long; denies any involvement with the ONA, and denies authorship of the few new, dated and undated, articles, about The Numinous Way, which have appeared on the internet in the past two or three years and which, sometimes, have been attributed to him or have had his name added to them.

———

Myatt, Anton Long, The ONA, and The Mysticism of The Numinous Way

Reading Myatt’s latest material about The Numinous Way, his poetry and “private letters”, it appears he’s left behind both Islam and – if it’s accepted he’s “Anton Long” – the ONA itself.

Perhaps it would be better to say: material attributed to him. But, that said, my personal view – and that of some other people I know, who are mostly associated with the Order of Nine Agles – is that he’s neither publicly left behind his role as a radical Islamist, inciting Jihad, nor left behind the ONA, or maybe I should say, my assumption is that he’s not personally abandoned, nor personally gone beyond, the ONA.

Certainly, there appeared, for a short while and in public, updated versions of Part 3 of his Autobiographical Notes, attributed to him, as well as updated material by Julie Wright, which did appear to confirm that he’s finally abandoned Islam, and returned to his own Numinous Way philosophy. But these were all soon removed, to be replaced with the “older” versions which affirmed his continuing commitment to Islam. This indicates, to me, that he wants to maintain – in public at least – his image as a radical Muslim, and leaves open the question as to whether or not he personally has abandoned belief in Islam, assuming, that is, he ever did have any real, personal, belief in Islam, and wasn’t just using it for some sinister purpose as many people, myself included, believed and believe.

There is also the fact that Myatt has continued to write Islamist articles – at least five dated this year, including The Aims of Al-Qaeda (dated only a few months ago) and Honour is From Allah Alone (dated just last month). He has also contributed, in the past six months, to several topics on the English IslamicAwakening internet forum. All his Islamist websites are still currently on-line as well, containing as they do his “conversion” writings, such as From Neo-Nazi to Muslim.

In addition, the new material, distributed by the ONA in the past three years, and attributed to Anton Long, would certainly seem to indicate that he hasn’t abandoned the ONA either. This new material includes an interview with AL (Toward The Dark Formless Acausal) dated 119 Year of Fayen, several new Occult short stories, and may new ONA MSS, such as The Mythos of the Dark Gods: Beings of Acausal Darkness, and The Five-Dimensional Magick of the Seventh Way. In fact, I think it’s true to say that more new ONA material has been circulated in the past three years than in the previous five years, with a lot of this new material being very recent, dating from this year (this is especially true of the Occult stories, such as Herewith, The Darkness).

All of which leaves us with “the usual questions” – such as what Myatt’s own, personal, goals and beliefs are; and how is it that someone can have so many public personae and produce so many varied, and apparently contradictory, works. For do not his Islamic writings and his public Muslim persona contradict the writings on The Numinous by, or attributed to, him? Does the ONA not contradict both Islam and this Numinous Way which he’s developed?

Or is there just a simple answer, which is easy to find if we accept that his ulterior motives, his aims, have never changed over the past four decades of what has been called his Promethean quest, and that everything he has done and is doing, every persona we associate with him, from fanatical nazi, to radical Islamist, to Nature loving mystic, to satanic Grand Master, is somehow connected – maybe in ways we might not understand nor appreciate – with those motives and aims?

This is the answer that I, and quite a few other people interested in Myatt and all his works, accept. It seems obvious, then, that his ulterior motives, and his aims, are sinister ones, connected with the ONA, and are to disrupt, in any way he can, what he calls “the Magian New World Order”; to produce and provoke and inspire change in people, and in society; with this disruption and this change being preludes to, and the foundation of, his vision of Homo Galactica and of a Dark Imperium whose basis is a new breed of warrior like individuals whose way of life is founded on personal honor.

It’s interesting – and important – that one of newer ONA MSS, written by Anton Long and dated this year, is a short incisive essay entitled, simply, Dark Imperium, which I will quote here, in full, as it kind of “gives the game away”.

<!–begin quote–>
One of the exoteric – practical and outward – aims of The Order of Nine Angles is to aid the creation of a Dark Imperium. This Dark Imperium is and will be a manifestation, a practical implementation, of The Sinister, of The Sinister Dialectic, where Sinister Adepts (and, of course, Sinister Masters and Lady Masters) guide, control and manipulate – on a large scale – ordinary (non-Initiated) mortals, and thus effect sinister changes in a particular society, or in many societies.

It is one of the aims of the person named by sinister esoteric tradition as Vindex to create the foundations for this Dark Imperium, and, in practical terms, the Dark Imperium will be a large, organized – most probably militaristic – society whose ideals are those of excellence and of the noble honourable warrior and warrioress, and whose ethos will be essentially pagan. In addition, this Dark Imperium will function on the basis of the warrior leadership-principle and not upon any form of democracy, just as – and importantly – the basis for the law, for the justice, of the new societies of this Imperium will be personal honour (the law of the warrior), and not the abstract, dis-honourable, law that has come to dominate all Western societies, to the detriment of our evolution as a species.

Given this distinctive practical nature of the Dark Imperium, it will thus be ideologically, violently, and of necessity, opposed to the current materialistic, “politically-correct”, democratic, plebeian, status quo, in the West, and elsewhere, and – once established – one of the first practical aims of this new Imperium will be to extend, if necessary by force of arms and conquest, its Law of the Warrior to other societies, creating in time a new world-wide Empire. It is this new world Empire which will efficiently begin the practical colonization of Space, first in our own Solar System, and then among the stars. It will do this practical exploration and colonization of Space both as duty and as a necessity, since such practical exploration and colonization is an integral part of its fundamental, irrevocable, pagan and warrior ethos.

Furthermore, such a Dark Imperium will, outwardly, not be directly associated with “the Satanic” or with “Satanists”, although, under the guidance, the leadership, of Vindex and his (or her) successors, this warrior society will be aiding the Sinister Dialectic and thus achieving long-term Sinister, Satanic, goals.

Of course, Sinister Adepts – and some sagacious non-Initiates – will understand that such a Dark Imperium is itself only a stage; only one part of an Aeonic process; and that, as such, it does not represent the essence, nor the ultimate aims, of the ONA itself, although it is only to be expected that the majority among the plebeius will fail to appreciate the difference.

In essence, the Dark Imperium is a stage toward the emergence of – a means to create – that new human species which Sinister Adepts have named, variously, as Homo Sol, Homo Galactica and Homo Galacticus: the Promethean species whose homes, whose dwellings, whose life, will be among the star-systems of our Galaxy, and then among the star-systems of other Galaxies in the causal Cosmos.
<– end quote–!>

Of course Myatt – in his Muslim persona and when asked – publicly affirms his continuing commitment to Islam; still continues, publicly and privately and consistently, to deny being Anton Long; denies any involvement with the ONA, and denies authorship of the few new, dated and undated, articles, about The Numinous Way, which have appeared on the internet in the past two or three years and which, sometimes, have been attributed to him or have had his name added to them.

Is Myatt still imbued with the task of [ONA] Master?

I think it’s obvious (to perceptive individuals outside the ONA) that he’s still leading this “Dark Order” – given his recent works as “Anton Long”; the new stories, for instance; the newer esoteric MSS in the past two years (of which there are dozens) – and it’s naturally well known among those individuals who are “of the ONA”. In fact, I think he’s probably done more stuff (including written material) for the ONA these past two years than he has in his role as Islamist Jihadist, and in his self created role of “Nature mystic”, evident in his recent letters, poems and Numinous Way stuff.

Which I suppose leads us on to the value, and purpose, in esoteric terms, of this “mystical” stuff – his Jihadist stuff obviously being useful in achieving some sinister goals.

My assumption, my personal view, and that of several other people I know, is that he crafted his Numinous Way for a specific very long term purpose, which is of providing a complete pagan “way” to enable some people to live beyond and independent of the current “System” (the New World Order and the like with its Magian values). That is, to create new communities and from them, over causal time, new dynamic and warrior tribes, for the ethic of personal honor, and the law of honor, are the ethical foundations of this new “way” of his. His development of this Way was – somewhat fortuitously – helped by his own recent personal experiences, of bereavement and the like, and this enabled him to create another persona for himself, or perhaps more accurately to more fully develop another aspect of himself (which was already there and evident in his poetry), which persona – that of a Nature loving mystic – some individuals can identify with and which then changes, inspires, them and leads them to do stuff and maybe develop this pagan way further and into new directions.

Thus, it seems obvious that he’s never – despite outward appearances – changed his inner goals or his “loyalty” to his own sinister path. He’s just somehow managed to synthesize the array of his amazingly diverse experiences in an alchemical way (that is, in a magickal way) to aid those goals and that path, although naturally most people don’t see this, and certainly wouldn’t understand it even if they did see it.

So, I think this new mystical stuff is part of the “overall package” – of setting certain things in motion, if you like, which are or which will become useful to “us” (even though it “appears” to be of “light” and not of “the dark”) and which will certainly aid the creation of a New Aeon as well as aid the fight against the Old, Magian, Order.

Aeonics

The Numinous Cyclic Theory of David Myatt

by Kerry Bolton

British esotericist and now convert to Islam, David Myatt, formulated a cyclic theory called Aeonics. This merits individual attention as Aeonics provides another perspective on history from a specifically spiritual standpoint. Myatt’s Aeonics, as the term makes obvious, is based on cycles as “aeons” or Ages, each with its own numinous or spiritual character and stemming from what Myatt terms the acausal, the supra-natural acting upon the causal or physical world.

Myatt himself ascribes the foundations of Aeonics to both Spengler and Toynbee, (Myatt, 1984, 1-3) the latter providing the paradigm of civilisations as arising from challenges. Myatt’s own concern for much of his life has been the overcoming of the Western cycle of decline, that it might fulfil what he considered its destiny. While Toynbee states that Civilisations end in a last hurrah of world-empire, Myatt adds Spengler’s Faustian challenge, stating that the destiny of the Western Civilisation is that of Galactic Empire. Spengler’s definition of the Western cultural ethos as Faustian meant that the West’s own unique culture-soul is based on an unquenchable reach for infinity and exploration, unfolding all the secrets of nature. This Faustian ethos is manifested as the cultural soul in all the elements of the West in its cycles of becoming. Hence the distance and perspective of the art of Rembrandt and the feelings of infinity conjured by the outreach of the Gothic spire. (Myatt, 1984, The West, 3).

Myatt goes beyond this seeing the space ship, space exploration and ultimately galactic settlement and Galactic empire as the logical ultimate expression of the Faustian soul. (Myatt, 1984, The Faustian Spirit, 6). Myatt succinctly states: “If we need a symbol to represent our Western civilisation – to express its quintessence – it is the spacecraft.” (Myatt, ibid. 7.).The Western Civilisation would be superseded by a Galactic Civilisation just as the Roman Civilisation had superseded the Greek, and the Western the Roman.

This Western destiny Myatt explained in the opening paragraphs to Vindex referring to Toynbee in defining civilisations: “Acceding to Toynbee, a civilisation arises from either a physical or a social challenge – that is, civilisation is man’s successful response to a particular geographical or social challenge.” He gives as an e.g. the Egyptian civilisation as arising from the challenge of the Nile River Valley. Each civilisation declines and produces what Toynbee calls a “Universal State, usually an empire which lasts generally for a 400 year cycle. (Myatt, 1984, 1).

Myatt’s 1984 book was directed to those working on a causal, political level. Esoterically, Aeons could be influenced by those working magickally, adepts who had reached a level of consciousness to utilise the theory of Aeonics to work consciously to intervene in the cycles of history by opening the causal to acausal energies, or what are called the “dark gods”. Hitherto civilisations had arisen unconsciously, and man had been subject to the laws of cyclicity without being aware of the forces that were controlling him. Now through Aeonics and the conscious Aeonic magick directed by occult adepts, the cyclic laws could be consciously directed. Western Civilisation would go through its final cycle, but this would be the prelude to a new civilisation, the Galactic empire, extending the West’s Faustian scientific impulse.

In order for this destiny to unfold, those conscious of this cultural destiny would have to actively work for it both esoterically and exoterically. Myatt was therefore involved in formulating a system of occultism via the Order of Nine Angles (ONA), the primary magickal purpose being to open what Myatt called “nexions”, the meaning of which can be readily deduced from the word: a nexus or star-gate between the acausal and the casual worlds. The ONA had a unique pantheon of dark gods and goddesses relating to the opening of star gates through which acausal energies would be manifested on earth. A large corpus of occult literature was formulated by the ONA, indicating Myatt’s depth of occult knowledge.

Myatt explained the cyclic interregnum during which adepts could work to herald the next civilisation:

“Regarding Aeons, two important facts should be borne in mind. First the last five hundred years or so of an Aeon show a marked decline in the magickal energy associated with it, and it is during this time that the energies of the next Aeon gradually become evident (at first usually only to Adepts) these energies may be increased (or decreased) by Aeonic magick worked by those who understand the forces involved. Second, each Aeon is associated with what is called a ‘higher civilisation’ from which the Aeon usually takes its name. Within the physical confines of this higher civilisation is the (usually sacred) place where the magickal energies of the Aeon are pronounced – and this because such a place is usually a physical Gate where the causal and the acausal meet. For instance, the centre associated with the Hyperborean Aeon was Stonehenge; that of the Hellenic, Delphi. ” (Myatt aka Thorold West, 1989, Naos, The Septenary System).

In explaining terms, Myatt defines a Star-Gate or nexion as “a nexus between the acausal and the causal.” These star-gates are in the ONA Tradition “the regions of space near the stars Algol, Dabih, and Naos” and they are said to be actual physical gates, not simply metaphors. (Myatt, Naos, Notes on Esoteric Tradition).

The Adept opens a nexion within the psyche by following the “seven fold way” of the ONA, a grade system that tests the physical endurance of the aspirant as much as the mental and psychological. (Myatt, Naos, Part One: Physis Magick).

In defining the causal and the acausal, Myatt states that “the causal is the ‘physical universe”, described by three dimensional and linear time. The acausal is the universe described by “an unspecified number of spatial dimensions and by non-linear time.” Life is a manifestation of the acausal within the causal. It is in the psyche where the two universes coincide, and where the individual might become part of the acausal by opening a nexion. Archetypes are a manifestation of this. As this relates to Aeons, Myatt explains:

“An Aeon is a particular ordering of the causal on Earth which is manifest as a civilisation – i.e. an increasing of the acausal, usually at a specified place/area for a specified period of (linear) time). Magick is the presencing of the acausal in the causal.” (Myatt, Naos, Acausal/Causal).

These fundamentals of Aeonics and Aeonic magick were articulated and refined over a number of MSS some by Myatt, others by his protégé and successor as ONA Grand Master Richard Moult, a talented artist and musician, both often writing under the generic pseudonym Anton Long. [See Editorial Footnote below.]

Myatt himself has had a long spiritual odyssey, somewhat reminiscent of the legend of Doctor Faustus himself, a never-ending quest for knowledge.

In 1998 Myatt converted to Islam and identifies with the militant manifestations of the Muslim world. Like Ungern-Sternberg, who is considered below, who converted to a militaristic Buddhism as his answer to Bolshevism and Western decadence in the aftermath of World War I, Myatt became a Muslim as his answer to the West’s spiritual void and break with Tradition. He now sees the West as irredeemably lost and not capable of emerging from its cycle of decline. Myatt, now known as Abdul-Aziz ibn Myatt, relates something of this spiritual odyssey in a recent interview:

“What it is about this faith, rather than all of the others, that has gripped you? What is it about Islamic culture, law and the way of life that has so spoken to your heart and soul over ours?”

Basically, Islam is a true middle-way. It is simple both in practice and in theory, and is an easy Way for we fallible, error-prone, human beings to become better individuals. Consider, for instance, prayer – Salat (also called Namaz). This is always short, and easy to do. It is a combination of words, gestures and movement – unlike any other form of prayer such as Nazarene, Buddhist, heathen. … In my life, I have experienced and performed many types of prayer – from Buddhist to Taoist to Anglican, to Catholic (including those of Benedictine and Carthusian monasticism) to Hinduism – and of all of them I found Namaz to be both the most human and the most numinous, the most imbued with the Divine, for we prostrate ourselves before God, knowing ourselves for the weak individuals we are. One of the many remarkable things I remember about Islam is when, only a short while after my own conversion, I went to travel again in the Desert, and it was so poignant doing Namaz there, with no one around for hundreds of miles: saying the same words, and praying in the same way, as the Prophet Muhammad (salla Allahu ‘alayhi wa sallam) had done, over one thousand and forty years ago; for alone, in the Desert, one can feel the closeness of God, of Allah Subhanahu wa Ta’ala – feel how slender is the thread by which we cling to life. One can sense the true Peace that is Jannah (Paradise) and the wonder of Life, of Creation.” (Myatt, http://www.dwmyatt.info/questions-dm.html).

He sees Islam as the only means by which Western decadence can be swept from the world, to make way for a numinous civilisation based on Islam. Myatt sees instead of a Western Imperium leading to Galactic Empire, a world Muslim Civilisation; under a world Khalifate, re-establishing a chivalrous, honourable ethos, where the West cannot. One could be reminded that it was the Islamic civilisation in its “Spring” Cycle that provided the impetus for learning and culture, that brought much to Europe, laid the basis for modern chemistry and mathematics, and provided the basis for the West’s Knightly chivalry which the Crusaders had encountered among their Muslim foes.

While Myatt repudiates many of his previous views his fundamental ethos remains, the ideals of the numinous; of life based on honour and chivalry; a detestation of the ignoble and the cowardly, the hedonistic and materialistic that he continues to see dominating the West in its decline, and of the prospect of a Galactic Empire, all these now possibly being manifested under Islam rather than by calling upon dark astral gods. In a recent interview Myatt explains the position he’s adhered to since his conversion in 1998:

“What I gradually discovered in the years leading toward my reversion to Islam was that the numinous is presenced in Deen Al-Islam, and that it is Deen Al-Islam which today as in the past produces honourable, modest, individuals who possess manners, who respect what is sacred, and who thus are civilized. In addition, who are the honourable warriors of today other than the Mujahideen who fight against often overwhelming odds and who prefer death to dishonour? What kind of community – “society” – would and could Deen Al-Islam create were such honourable warriors to be triumphant? Would they not build a Khilafah led by an Ameer, a Khalifah (a leader) and would this Khilafah not be everything I once dreamed an Imperium might be, and might not this Khilafah be an example to others as the Khilafah in Al-Andulus was to the barbarians of Europe, and might it not, its enemies defeated, reach out toward the stars and so establish a new and Galactic Empire? Thus, as I wrote in an autobiographical essay:

“As for my dream, my life-long vision, of a Galactic Empire – of the exploration and settlement of Outer Space – there was a time, not that long ago, when I came to the conclusion that we human beings were too ignoble, too barbaric, too uncivilized, to do this, and that, if we did undertake such adventures beyond the Earth, we would only be spreading dishonour: spreading our disease of hubris, spreading our destruction of the Numinous. But now – now as I veer toward the sixth decade of my life – I feel that we can avoid such things: that there is a cure for the disease of hubris and of dishonour, and that were we to be cured – and thus return to our natural fitrah – then we could and perhaps should so venture forth, under the banner of Deen Al-Islam.” (Myatt, http://www.dwmyatt.info/questions-dm.html).

On a question regarding the present state of the West, Myatt states:

“The peoples of the West have significantly changed in the last fifty or so years. The England I knew as a youth, fresh from a life in the Far East and Africa – the England my father and my grandfather thought they fought in two World Wars for – has almost disappeared. Manners have been replaced with arrogant selfishness; gentlemanly (and lady-like) self-effacement and modesty has been replaced by loutish behaviour in public and in private; and restraint has given way to decadence, greed and self-indulgence. Honour is almost completely lacking, in public and in private. The West is now the domain of Homo Hubris: of the arrogant, the preening, the dishonourable human being who is intolerant of, or unmindful of, the numinous, which numinous is, in truth, the genesis of honour and of manners and of all the civilizing virtues.” (Myatt, ibid.).

From a cyclic perspective, the question remains as to whether Islam itself passed its own cycle of decline centuries ago, and descended irredeemably into what Spengler (Spengler, 1963, 159-186, Primitives, Culture-Peoples, Fellaheen) called a Fellaheen culture ; that is to say a culture that has expended all its energies, and is not capable of revival. At the very least, what might be said of the present world crisis is that Islam is the only bloc representing Tradition that is consciously in revolt against globalisation.

References:

Myatt David W., The Way of the Lighting & the Sun: A Western Martial Art, The Black Order (ONA), 1972.

While it is generally known and accepted that Moult was involved with the ONA and produced some of their writings and other works, such as “The Sinister Tarot” card deck, he never became a “Grand Master” – having left the group halfway through his training – and neither did he ever, according to my sources, use the pseudonym Anton Long.

The Life and Poetry of D. W. Myatt

Myatt’s Life:

The poetry presented of this Web-site (see Footnote 1 ) is the creative work of a man with an interesting history. His life, according to one source, is a modern “odyssey”.

All artistic creations should be judged on their merits, and while the life and former beliefs, political or otherwise, of the artist may be of interest, they should not cloud one’s artistic judgment. In the majority of instances, while the artistic creations are remembered after the death of the artist, their personal beliefs and political opinions are long forgotten.

Outwardly, Myatt’s Promethean quest is now generally known – involving as it did, among other things, a study, in the Far East, of Martial Arts; the violence of ultra-nationalist politics; periods as a vagabond; two terms of imprisonment for violence; personal involvement with Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Christianity, Paganism, the Occult; and membership of a highly secret military organization, set up by British government during the Cold War, to conduct sabotage and assassinations. In complete contrast, his interior personal life is much less well-known.

It may have been that his first period as a vagabond, in the 1970’s, was prompted, in part, by a series of ultimately unhappy romantic liaisons, one of which led to the young women in question moving abroad where she gave birth to Myatt’s daughter. This series of events does seem to have inspired some of his early poetry, as did his first marriage, which failed when his wife ran off with a younger woman (who, incidentally, was the dedicatee of Myatt’s translation of Sappho’s poetry). His second marriage ended with the death, at the age of 39, of his wife from cancer. The failure of his third marriage led him to spend another period as a homeless vagabond, in the hills and Fells of Cumbria, a period which inspired him to produce more pagan poetry before he returned to writing about that second love of his life, women. For if there are two themes which consistently run through his poetry, they are Nature, and women. Indeed, he once remarked that “I often feel that some women embody the beauty, the numinosity, the joy, the sensuality, of Nature.”

This love of women is especially evident in his short-story entitled One Connexion; in a manuscript he wrote over two decades ago – about a relationship involving two women – to which he gave the title Breaking the Silence Down, in many of his poems, and in several of his letters to me:

So it was that I then, as now, remembered a wisdom of years ago, forgotten in the artificial turmoil of political, religious, plots, of chasing ideological schemes and promethean dreams. Remembered especially when I, only months ago, in her, my married lover’s house, awoke and she, my new love, lay warm, naked and half-asleep beside me, our limbs, our bodies, our feelings, entwined, and there was no need to speak, to leave. We seemed one, then, as when our passion joined us and we would lie, wordless, looking, smiling, gently moving, touching, in that beautiful calmness of love. (A Learning: Hand written letter, by Myatt, addressed to JR Wright, dated Nearing the Winter Solstice; postmarked December 17 2002.)

It is my own, personal, view that, in order to understand Myatt himself, we must look beyond the many journalistic clichés written about him to his poetry, for much of this poetry is profoundly autobiographical, and seems to express “the real Myatt” behind the façade of the various political, religious and Occult rôles he has assumed, and played, during the past four decades.

Myatt’s Poetry:
It is one of the aims of Art to elevate us and raise us up and away from the mundane world. The poetry of David Myatt is decidedly non-political. If it can be categorized, it is “pagan”, Nature-loving, rather mystical, and empathic. It is also highly individualistic, not to say romantic.

What we find expressed in much of this poetry is a profound desire for a more natural and a more human way of life. We also discover, in his poetry, a sensitive man, in love with Nature, who seems to enjoy the company of women far more than the company of men, and who finds:

There is much that is beautiful
But nothing that surpasses the beauty some women
Reveal
Through their eyes
(The Silent Wisdom)

It seems that his diverse peregrinations, adventures, travels, wanderings and involvements have inspired his diverse poetry, and it is therefore not surprising that some of his poems are about love, the joy of love, and the sorrow that often arises when love ends:

It was a calm night
Perfumed by moon
Which drew droplets of fractured
Light to my pillow and relief
To the majesty of her flesh

(Summer Love)

These are the moments of an exquisite silence
As we lie together on your sofa, holding, pressing
Our bodies together
As I, gently, stroke your face and hair
And you kiss each finger of my hand.
(One Exquisite Silence)

Only in passion did we glimpse in moments a beauty
Beyond –
As when, satiated within our lover’s arms,
Our being relaxed to journey in defiance of our life
To where some gods were born
While rain played as rain played upon those panes of glass
And a Church clock tolled its ten amid the morning city noise
In her Apartment
When we who waited warm in bed should long ago
Have been upon our way to work.

(Only Relate)

This week will become the month of loss,
This month a toil endured
As when the weary soil, drought-kept,
Waits, waiting, to bring forth flowering joy from seeds,
Like memory, sown from tears that are earth’s rain,
My pain.

(Such A Poem As This)

I have no sentence of undisputed meaning
To describe the feeling
As I entered to hear the organ playing Bach:
There was no Time
No century of belonging
Only a leaving in an inward implosion
As I stood, unaware of who or what I was.

But she was real, this goddess
Who played with thin fingers
Creating in an instant a divinity
Of love
Her wraithe form almost swathed in black:
She looked up, once, as I sat astounded,
And smiled in concentration.

(Playing Bach)

I had gone, unannounced, unexpected,To see them kiss as they stoodNear her window.

Each false Spring is a lessonWhich Nature slowly learnsAs harsh Winter in returnedWhen stark frost, chilling,Creeps to crack some bursting buds:Poems cannot change thisJust as Summer is not SummerWithout Spring

(Shadow Game)

But no spell, no wish
Brought my distant lover to me
And I was left to run slowly
Back
And wait the long hours
To Dawn.

By the fire, I think of nothing
Except the warmth of my love
No longer needed.

(In The Night)

Always a dream or a memory
Lead us on
And we wait like children
Trusting in the spirits of the Earth.
We love unsuspecting
While they our lovers scheme,
Succour themselves on our blood
And bleed us dry (Letter)

Bereavement:

Some of Myatt’s most intensely personal poetry was written in the months and years following the suicide of his fiancée. Of that event, Myatt writes, in perhaps his most sad, yet poignantly beautiful, poem:

What have we to give them, now?
What have we but words said,
Unsaid, deeds done or promised unfulfilled?
What have we to give them now –
Too late the love, the words, the effort
That might have saved them:
Too late this knowing of such sadness and such grief….

How do we, can we, live when guilt at our living
Wakes us in the late or early night
And we hope, pray, believe:
But this is life – they are gone; dead, taken from us
And no words, no deeds now can redeem or save them:

So we move from night to day to night –
We, the living-dead that our dead leave alive.
(We Are The Ones The Dead Leave Behind)

Gradually, and after well over a year, he records a change of mood:

Yet, in moments,
A certain calmness calms:
Grown, growing – uninvited, unexpected – as the warmth of this morning
Measures out six seasons since her death
While the toiling species toils
Trapped
In Time through ego;
No gentle wisdom, no empathy, there
Only a painful birthing of colourless dull abstractions.

So I sigh, one prism so briefly placed on Earth
Among some dewy grass.

(This Dewy Autumnal Grass)

Then perhaps, unsurprisingly for him, comes some solace, from Nature, recorded in his latest poem:

So this is Peace:
As the Sun of warm November
Warms and the grass grows with such mildness.

No strife, here;
No place beyond this place
As Farm meets meadow field
And I upon some hessian sack sit, write
To hear some distant calls from hedged-in sheep:
No breeze
To stir the fallen leaves
That lie among the seeds, there
Where the old Oak towers, shading fence
From Sun
And the pond is hazed with midges.

(The Sun of Warm November)

Conclusion:

Given Myatt’s quite profuse poetic output, of – to date – several hundred poems, it is to be expected that there is some variation in quality. Or, perhaps I should say, there are certain poems that do not resonate with me, and others which do, although Myatt himself admits, in a recent letter, and in answer to a question about his poetry, that: “Of all my profuse poetic scribblings, I can find only half a dozen or so that I can bear to re-read and which are, in my opinion, good. Some others may just be passable, but there are many – the majority, again in my opinion – which are lacking in either style or profoundity, or both, and which perhaps should be forgotten…” (Private hand-written letter, by Myatt, addressed to JR Wright, which he dated 25.vii.08 CE/21 Rajab 1429.)

In the end, as often in artistic matters, it is perhaps a matter of individual taste, of whether one “likes” – or feels an affinity for – certain poems, rather than a question of pure intellectual aesthetic judgment or critical analysis based on some contrived academic theory. For that, surely, is what good poetry should do – move, us, emotionally, and possibly express something which we ourselves may have felt or experienced but cannot quite find the words to describe. Certainly, in my view, many of Myatt’s poems express something quite touching about Nature, love, sadness, and about our rather wistful human condition.

In conclusion, if David Myatt is to be remembered, it will hopefully be for his poetry, rather than for his political or religious writings, his past political associations, or his quest among the religions of the world.

“I, and others like me, are the darkness which is necessary and without which evolution and knowledge are impossible. I am also my own opposite, and yet beyond both. This is not a riddle, but a statement of Mastery, and one which, alas, so few have the ability to understand.”Diablerie: Revelations of a Satanist by Anton Long

“To strive, to dream, to quest, to exceed expectations. To move easily, gracefully,from the Light to the Dark, from Dark to Light, until one exists between yet beyond both, treating them (and yourself) for the imposters they (and you) are.” Anton Long: The Gentleman’s – and Noble Ladies – Brief Guide to The Dark Arts

Previously, I had arrived at the generally accepted conclusion that Myatt was a sinister fanatic, committed to the Dark Path evident in the ONA, and had used violence, terrorism, and political ideas in an attempt to cause chaos, and to subvert and overthrow society in order to bring about some kind of Dark Imperium, or Dark New Order.

This is still – despite some recent reservations, which I shall mention in due course – my own, personal, view regarding Myatt. In respect of Myatt’s conversion to Islam, my considered personal opinion is that Myatt was using radical Islam as a sinister tactic in order to further his clandestine sinister aims, which are of causing chaos and disruption, of inciting violence and terrorism, and of – in a classical act of diabolic blasphemy befitting a Grand Master of The Left Hand Path – championing those causes and people which and who are regarded, in the society of his time, as heretical, and support for which is often illegal, and certainly controversial and dangerous, under conventional laws. Hence, for instance, his championing and propagation of both the National Socialism of Adolf Hitler, and his support for people such as Usama bin Laden. Thus, according to the ONA:

“What is not well understood even among some sinister Initiates, is that the promotion of radical Islam – against the Magian/New World Order/Nazarene ethos that now pervades and which is distorting evolution and ushering in a new tyranny – is akin to a sinister rite which presences certain acausal energies.

Thus, such promotion of and support for things and people considered by the neo-cons to be “evil” – such as bin Laden – is a new Black Mass appropriate to these times of ours. It is now a heresy in “the West”.

The practical participation and encouragement of such things – directly contrary to the current status quo – is thus one valid personal Insight Role (for the really satanic, not the role-players) and a means of presencing genuine sinister energies: one aspect of a new five-dimensional presencing (or act of magick in Old Aeon speak) and thus an act of sinister magick appropriate to these causal times.” Vindex, NS, Islam, Chaos and Magick: Toward A New Heresy (A presentation given at an ONA Sunedrion in Oxford, “around the time of the Spring Solstice 117 yf”.)

Furthermore, according to one of Myatt’s supporters in an interesting essay entitledQuestions About David Myatt – An Interview with Richard Stirling, Exoteric Representative of the ONA :

“Myatt is the archetypal Trickster – or to be more exact, the archetypal Mage. That is, he has been following a certain esoteric Way, or Path, which Way he has significantly extended as he has ventured along it, and that his diverse experiences, and roles, have been part of this Promethean quest. This, of course, includes both his role as a fanatical National Socialist, and his role as a radical Islamist, preaching Jihad.

How do you think he [Myatt] will be – or should be – regarded in a hundred years time?

As a genuine Mage – a Grand Master of The Left Hand Path – who has dared to genuinely defy and who has dared to undertake genuine diverse practical experiences and roles, lasting many years. He makes the charlatans – the Laveys, the Aquinos, the Crowleys – look like charlatans.”

“Myatt may seem to have flitted from one politico-religious philosophy to another, but there is a terrible thread of continuity and rigour through his life and writings that suggests he is much more than a disingenuous provocateur. Naziism and Islamicism have served, in turn, as modalities of disruption for what remains at core an occult working to sow general chaos and division – the necessary passage of “Helter Skelter” to break down the Old Order, before the founding of the New.”

This is, in my view, might well be a correct assessment of Myatt, even given Myatt’s many Islamic effusions, and his many and varied recent mystical effusions, which mystical effusions could possibly be some new emanation of his sinister dialectic, or some new dark jape he is playing, for his own amusement, or that of his colleagues(19). That is, Myatt may have deliberately set out to create yet another new image for himself – this time of a “wise, old, Mage”. This image certainly seems, at the time of writing (2008 AD) to be the one projected by many of Myatt’s recent letters and mystical missives, many of which are reproduced on some websites maintained by both Myatt supporters and Myatt himself, often – and interestingly enough – with the dates omitted. Furthermore, the “founding of the New”, mentioned in the above quote, is – as I have stated above and elsewhere – some kind of neo-nazi society, a Dark Imperium, the creation of which has certainly been Myatt’s primary aim for over thirty years.

However, to be fair, I have to admit that Myatt’ s many personal letters, missives and personal articles – written in the past two and a half years following the suicide of a close friend (20) – have made me wonder if my previous conclusion regarding him and the Occult is still valid. For these intensely personal items – which often concern the need for compassion and empathy – do, or rather, might, seem to indicate that he may have gone some way beyond certain Occult rôles, and creating images for himself, and even beyond the dark sinister path he has probably been following for decades. Certainly, they do seem to indicate a move away from politics and conventional religion (21), as they also seem to represent a further ethical development of his own philosophy, The Numinous Way (22). Thus, it could well be that Myatt has now – possibly as a result of his life-long Occult quest – arrived at the stage represented by the “reclusive, and mystical, empathic and compassionate Mage.”

Yet it is also worth remembering what I wrote in my Biographical Notes about Myatt:

“Let us not forget Myatt, The Master Trickster – for it might well be that his recent mystical effusions are one more jape, of his, or some more diversionary tactics, or even some kind of test, for the loyalty, and honor of others. For I personally find it to be of great interest that one of his Islamist supporters, based in America – himself a convert to Islam who still believes Myatt has never renounced his loyalty to Islam – has openly stated that he believes Myatt is testing people in this way. Add to this the allegations regarding the falsifications of dates on some articles attributed to Myatt, the allegations regarding some articles being incorrectly attributed to Myatt, and the disinformation propagated about Myatt by his enemies, and we surely have to take some care before drawing our own conclusions about the man.”

Thus, it does seem that the final conclusion as to David Myatt’s real intentions and nature, at this moment in time, can only realistically be that each one of us will have to draw our own conclusions based on what little we know and – more interestingly – on what we assume or believe. Our conclusion may say more about us, and our society, than it might say about Myatt himself, and the fact we have to draw our own conclusions may be, as I myself believe, exactly what Myatt himself wishes, as some kind of test for us, and our honor. To quote an apposite verse from his translation of the Agamemnon by Aeschylus – which verse he has appended to several of his letters to me –

As to my own intent:
To those who know, there is a speaking;
To those who do not know, a concealment.